Family releases suicide note of former Senate aide accused of child porn

By Scott McCabe

A former top Senate aide accused of possessing child pornography left a suicide note saying he was sexually abused as a child, according to his family.

The body of 35-year-old Jesse Ryan Loskarn was found at his family home basement in Carroll County, Md., on Thursday. The former chief of staff to Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee had been living at the family home since after his arrest in December.

“During this tragic time he had no voice, but in his death he can be heard,” his mother wrote in an online post.

Loskarn spent five days on suicide watch in the D.C. jail, he wrote, asking the same questions that everyone wants to know: “Why?”

“In some ways I feel disgusting sharing this truth with you because in my heart I still struggle to see my five-year-old self as a victim,” he wrote. “But I’m sharing this with you because it is the truth, not an excuse.

As a child he didn’t understand what happened to him, but only knew to keep it a secret, he wrote. As an adult, he worried that others might find out and only fleetingly mentioned the abuse to three friends, he said.

He started looking at child porn during a search for music on a peer-to-peer network, Loskarn wrote.

“I found myself drawn to videos that matched my own childhood abuse. It’s painful and humiliating to admit to myself, let alone the whole world, but I pictured myself as a child in the image or video,” the note says. “The more an image mirrored some element of my memories and took me back, the more I felt a connection.

“This is my deepest, darkest secret.”

The abuse, he said, happened when he was 5- and 9-years-old. He does not identify his abuser in the message released by his family.

A spokesperson for the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office said he immediately did not know if the investigators would try to determine who the alleged abuser might be.

Loskarn’s promising career came to a halt in December after federal agents raided his home in the 1800 block of Burke Street SE. Federal prosecutors had argued against releasing Loskarn because he was a potential suicide risk.

The preliminary investigation indicates that Loskarn may have taken his own life, according to the Carroll County Sheriff’s Office. The investigation continues.